The United States presently uses the NTSC standard for television transmissions. However, proposals have been made to replace the NTSC standard with an Advanced Television standard. For example, it has been proposed that the U.S. adopt digital standard-definition and advanced television formats at rates of 24 Hz, 30 Hz, 60 Hz, and 60 Hz interlaced. It is apparent that these rates are intended to continue (and thus be compatible with) the existing NTSC television display rate of 60 Hz (or 59.94 Hz). It is also apparent that “3-2 pulldown” is intended for display on 60 Hz displays when presenting movies, which have a temporal rate of 24 frames per second (fps). However, while the above proposal provides a menu of possible formats from which to select, each format only encodes and decodes a single resolution and frame rate. Because the display or motion rates of these formats are not integrally related to each other, conversion from one to another is difficult.
Further, this proposal does not provide a crucial capability of compatibility with computer displays. These proposed image motion rates are based upon historical rates which date back to the early part of this century. If a “clean-slate” were to be made, it is unlikely that these rates would be chosen. In the computer industry, where displays could utilize any rate over the last decade, rates in the 70 to 80 Hz range have proven optimal, with 72 and 75 Hz being the most common rates. Unfortunately, the proposed rates of 30 and 60 Hz lack useful interoperability with 72 or 75 Hz, resulting in degraded temporal performance.
In addition, it is being suggested by some that interlace is required, due to a claimed need to have about 1000 lines of resolution at high frame rates, but based upon the notion that such images cannot be compressed within the available 18-19 mbits/second of a conventional 6 MHz broadcast television channel.
It would be much more desirable if a single signal format were to be adopted, containing within it all of the desired standard and high definition resolutions. However, to do so within the bandwidth constraints of a conventional 6 MHz broadcast television channel requires compression and “scalability” of both frame rate (temporal) and resolution (spatial). One method specifically intended to provide for such scalability is the MPEG-2 standard. Unfortunately, the temporal and spatial scalability features specified within the MPEG-2 standard (and newer standards, like MPEG-4) are not sufficiently efficient to accommodate the needs of advanced television for the U.S. Thus, the proposal for advanced television for the U.S. is based upon the premise that temporal (frame rate) and spatial (resolution) layering are inefficient, and therefore discrete formats are necessary.
Further, it would be desirable to provide enhancements to resolution, image clarity, coding efficiency, and video production efficiency. The present invention provides such enhancements.